It looks like Sicily Inspired Antoon Van Dyck

The Financial Times reported this interesting story over the weekend. I cannot report the whole story here for copyright infringement. But it looks like Palermo played an active role in this great artist’s inspiration. Please find below a link to the article.

[...]

Van Dyck’s first biographer was the Italian Giovanni Pietro Bellori. According to Bellori, the painter sailed to Palermo in spring 1624 and, on arrival, painted the viceroy’s portrait, paid a visit to and painted Anguissola Sophonisba, the most famous female artist of the day, and made some religious images of St Rosalia, a patron of Palermo. But when a violent outbreak of plague struck the city he scuttled back to Genoa to complete his remaining Palermitan commissions in safety. He was in the city a mere four months.

More at ft.com

Looking for Prints of La Vucciria by Renato Guttuso

 

Ever since BBC broadcast Sicily Unpacked with Andrew Graham-Dixon and Giorgio Locatelli, an old post containing some information about La Vucciria Market by renowned Sicilian painter Renato Guttuso resuscitated. It looks like people are desperately searching for prints of this famous painting. If you have any information, please write to us. Thanks.

The Stromboli Project

“The Stromboli Project” is comprised of summer workshops held annually in Stromboli, Italy. Each workshop is carefully designed for distinct participants and dedicated to a specific focus. The program is committed to Research, Education & Production and intends to explore and hone connections between the text, the Linklater Voice Technique, the participants, and Stromboli’s magnificent landscape. The process is dedicated to communicating the universal power of stories and natural elements through film and theatrical performances.

Stromboli

The Sicilian island of Stromboli is one of seven Aeolian Islands and among the most active volcanoes on the planet. Its dramatic black sands, lush vegetation, deep blue seas, breathtaking sunsets and volcanic rumblings offer an inspiring set for the exploration of literature and theatrical texts. Among the texts explored each year isMetamorphoses, which Ovid wrote largely in neighboring Sicily. The presence of the characters in those immortal stories inhabits this magical part of the world. The participants’ voices and the texts will resonate in Stromboli and its dramatically changing environment: a landscape of earth, wind, fire and water, evoking elemental metamorphosis.

Contacts

Website: www.stromboliproject.com
Alessandro Fabrizi: alessandrofabrizi@libero.it
Susan Main: smain@nyc.rr.com

Renato Guttuso (26 December 1911 – 18 January 1987)

His best-known paintings include Flight from Etna (1938–39), Crucifixion (1941) and La Vucciria (1974). Guttuso also designed for the theatre (including sets and costumes for Histoire du Soldat, Rome, 1940) and did illustrations for books. Those for Elizabeth David’s Italian Food (1954), introduced him to many in the English-speaking world. A fierce anti-Fascist, “he developed out of Expressionism and the harsh light of his native land to paint landscapes and social commentary.”

He was born in Bagheria, near Palermo in Sicily, but from 1937 lived and worked largely in Rome. An anti-fascist, he joined the banned Italian Communist Party (PCI) in 1940 and left Rome to become an active participant in the partisan struggle from 1943. He was also an opponent to the Mafia. In 1972 Guttuso was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize. In 1976 he was elected to the Italian Senate as a PCI representative for the Sicilian constituency of Sciacca.

Renato Guttuso’s father, Gioacchino Guttuso, was a land surveyor and there are many portraits of him in the collection donated to the mayor of Bagheria. The precocious capabilities of the artist are apparent from the very first paintings from 1925.

His bourgeois adolescence offered him plenty of stimuli. Guttuso lived close to a house amongst the Valguarnera villas and Palagonia, which he would soon represent in paintings inspired by the cliffs of Aspra.

In Palermo and in the same Bagheria he saw the complete ruin of the nobility of the splendid villas of the 18th century, abandoned to urban decay as a consequence of political infighting within the municipal chambers. At the same time, his family suffered a period of economic stress because of the hostility shown by Fascists and clergy towards his father.

He went to Palermo for high school studies, and then to the University, where his development was modelled on the European figurative trends of the day, from Courbet to Van Gogh and to Picasso. His works opened to doors for him in Milan and to further travel throughout Europe.

As his expressionism became stronger we notice scenes of nature in flower, the lemon trees, the saracen olive trees, all in an environment suspended between myth and island insularity, that, when sent to the Quadriennale expo of 1931, he joined a collective of six Siciilian painters, acclaimed by the critic Franco Grasso as a “disclosure, a Sicilian affirmation”.

Back in Palermo he opened a studio in Pisani street and together with the painter Lia Pasqualino and the sculptors Barbera and Nino Franchina, formed the Gruppo dei Quattro (“The Group of Four”).

He rejected every academic canon, putting free figures in space and searching for the pure sense of color. Guttuso joined the artistic movement “Corrente”, which stood for free and open attitudes, in opposition to the official culture, and chose a strong anti-fascist position in the thematic choices through the years of the Spanish Civil War.

During a stay of three years in Milan, where he entered the cultural circle of Corrente di Vita, Guttuso developed his “social” art, which highlighted a moral and political commitment visible in paintings like Fucilazione in Campagna (1938), dedicated to the writer García Lorca, and Escape from Etna.

Moving to Rome, he opened a study in Via Margutta where, because of his natural exhuberance, his friend Marino Mazzacurati nicknamed him “Unbridled”. He lived close by to the significative artists of the time: Mario Mafai, Corrado Cagli, Antonello Trombadori, keeping also in contact with the group from Milan of Giacomo Manzù and Aligi Sassu.

The controversial painting for which he is best remembered, at the time derided by the clergy and the fascists because it denounced the horrors of the war under a religious cover, is Crocifissione (“Crucifixion”). Guttuso wrote in his diary: “it is the symbol of all those who endure insults, jail, torture for their ideas”.

He did not stop working during the years of World War II, his work ranging from landscape glimpses of the Gulf of Palermo to a collection of drawings entitled Massacri (“Massacres”), that clandestinely denounced slaughters such as the Fosse Ardeatine.

In those years he met and married Mimise, who will become his confidant and faithful spouse, and model as well. After the liberation of Italy from Nazi-fascism he finished Muratori in riposo (“Workers resting”), china ink and watercolor of 1945, a symbol of rebirth of which Pier Paolo Pasolini wrote in 1962:

“The shapes of ten workers

emerge white over white masonry

the noon is that of the summer.

But the humiliated flesh

projects a shadow; is the disarranged order

of the white colors, that is faithfully followed

by the black ones. The noon is a peaceful one“.

Then he painted Peasant Who Hoe (1947) and Peasants of Sicily (1951) in which the pictorical language became clear and free of all superfluous elements. Guttuso wrote that those were preparatory sketches for Occupation of uncultivated lands of Sicily, exhibited in the Venice Biennale in 1950, asserting:

“

I believe that these are legacies to my deeper and remote inspiration. To my childhood, to my people, my peasants, my father land-surveyor, the garden of lemons and oranges, to the gardens of the latifund familiar to my eye and my feeling, where I was born. Sicilian peasants who hold the primary position in my heart, because I am one of them, whose faces come in front of my eyes no matter what I do, Sicilian peasants so important in the history of Italy…

”

In 1950, Guttuso joined the project of the Verzocchi collection (in the civic Pinacoteca of Forlì), sending, a self-portrait, and the work “sicilian labourer”.

He succeeded in astonishing his audience, alternating between the luminous and full vision of color of Bagheria on the Gulf of Palermo to the Battle of the Bridge of the Admiral, in which he depicted his grandfather Ciro as a Garibaldine soldier. He painted also a series from live about the fights of peasants for the occupation of lands, the zolfatari, or glimpses of landscape between cactus and prickly pears, as well as portraits of men of culture like Nino Garajo and Bruno Caruso.

Fascinated by Dante’s model, in 1961 he made a series of color drawings, published in 1970, as Il Dante di Guttuso, depicting the characters of Hell as examples of human history, confirming the versatility of his talent.

In the late 1960s and 1970s he completed a suite of paintings devoted to the feminine figure, a motif that became as dominant in his painting as it was in his life: Donne stanze paesaggi, oggetti (1967) was followed by a series of portraits of Marta Marzotto, his preferred muse of many years.

His most famous “palermitano” painting is the Vucciria (the name of Palermo’s market), in which, with raw and bloody realism, he expressed one of the many spirits of the Sicilian city.

Guttuso died in Rome at the age of 75.

After the death of his wife, he reconciled with the Christian faith with which he had been critical and donated many of his works to his hometown Bagheria, now housed in the museum of the Villa Cattolica.

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Seeking Sicily by John Keahey

Seeking Sicily: A Cultural Journey Through Myth and Reality in the Heart of the Mediterranean is the title of John Keahey‘s new book, a travel narrative that captures Sicily and its various cultures through his eyes and the eyes of Sicilian authors of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, most notably Leonardo Sciascia (1921-1989) of Racalmuto, province of Agrigento. As the author travels around the Mediterranean’s largest — and most conquered — island, he will share photos of the places he visits, anecdotes and regional folklore.

The breathtaking sights, unique and mouth-watering smells of Sicily abound in John Keahey’s narrative. His adventures through this historic island will awaken your senses and capture your imagination. Famous for its distinct identity and heritage, as well as its notorious mafia ties, Sicily is the Mediterranean’s largest, and most conquered, island.

I had the chance to meet Mr. Keahey in person in Brooklyn a few weeks ago. He read a few pages of this book in front of an audience of 50 people or so and gained their attention with his gentle and refined manners. When I got the chance to talk to him directly, I was surprised to learn how much he grasped of the Sicilian culture and its real essence during his visit. I am always fascinated by the stories I hear about Sicily when outsiders report them. Mr. Keahey a meticulous observer and writer.

Emerging Sicilian Artists

Giovanni Iudice

Giovanni Viola

Giuseppe Sergi (1841 – 1936), Anthropologist

Giuseppe Sergi (1841–1936) was an influential Italian anthropologist of the early twentieth century, best known for his opposition to Nordicism in his books on the racial identity of ancient Mediterranean peoples. His concept of the Mediterranean race, became important to the modelling of racial difference in the early twentieth century.

Born in Messina, Sicily, Sergi first studied law and then linguistics and philosophy. At the age of 19 he took part in Garibaldi’s expedition to Sicily. He later took courses in physics and anatomy, finally specializing in racial anthropology as a student of Cesare Lombroso.

In 1880 he was appointed as professor of anthropology at the University of Bologna. At this time the discipline of anthropology was still associated with the Literature Faculty. In the following years, thanks to the activity of his Laboratory of Anthropology and Psychology, he helped establish the discipline on a more scientific basis. In 1884 he moved to the University of Rome where he developed a program of research into both psychology and anthropology.

In 1893 he founded the Roman Society of Anthropology, which later evolved into the Italian Anthropological Institute (Istituto Italiano di Antropologia). This grew from part of the university. He was initially assigned temporary premises in the School of Application for Engineers in San Pietro in Vincoli and from 1887 the precursor of the Institute operated from the old building of the Roman college, where Sergi also dedicated part of the space to the creation of an Anthropological museum. On 4 June 1893 the new Society was created.

Internationally renowned for his contributions to anthropology, he succeeded in establishing the International Conference of Psychology in Rome, 1905, under his presidency.

He died at Rome in 1936. His son Sergio Sergi (1878 – 1972), also a noted anthropologist, developed his father’s theories.

Sergi’s initial contribution was to oppose the use of the cephalic index to model population ancestry, arguing that over all cranial morphology was more useful. However, Sergi’s major theoretical achievement was his model of human ancestry, fully articulated in his books Human Variation (Varietà umane. Principio e metodo di classificazione) and The Mediterranean Race (1901), in which he argued that the earliest European peoples arose from original populations in the Horn of Africa, and were related to Hamitic peoples. This primal “Eurafrican race” split into three main groups, the Hamites, the Mediterranean race and the north EuropeanNordic race. Semitic people were closely related to Mediterraneans but constituted a distinct “Afroasian” group^[3]. The four great branches of the Mediterranean stock were the Libyans or Berbers , the Ligurians, the Pelasgians and the Iberians. Ancient Egyptians were considered by Sergi as a branch of the Libyans.

According to Sergi the Mediterranean race, the “greatest race in the world”, was responsible for the great civilisations of ancient times, including those of Egypt,Carthage, Greece and Rome. These Mediterranean peoples were quite distinct from the peoples of northern Europe.

Sergi argued that the Mediterraneans were more creative and imaginative than other peoples, which explained their ancient cultural and intellectual achievements, but that they were by nature volatile and unstable. In his book The Decline of the Latin Nations he argued that Northern Europeans had developed stoicism, tenacity and self-discipline due to the cold climate, and so were better adapted to succeed in modern civic cultures and economies.

Sergi’s initial contribution was to oppose the use of the cephalic index to model population ancestry, arguing that over all cranial morphology was more useful. ^[3]However, Sergi’s major theoretical achievement was his model of human ancestry, fully articulated in his books Human Variation (Varietà umane. Principio e metodo di classificazione) and The Mediterranean Race (1901), in which he argued that the earliest European peoples arose from original populations in the Horn of Africa, and were related to Hamitic peoples. This primal “Eurafrican race” split into three main groups, the Hamites, the Mediterranean race and the north EuropeanNordic race. Semitic people were closely related to Mediterraneans but constituted a distinct “Afroasian” group^[3]. The four great branches of the Mediterranean stock were the Libyans or Berbers , the Ligurians, the Pelasgians and the Iberians. Ancient Egyptians were considered by Sergi as a branch of the Libyans.

These theories were developed in opposition to Nordicism, the claim that the Nordic race was of pure Aryan stock and naturally superior to other Europeans. Sergi ridiculed Nordicists who claimed that the leaders of ancient Greek and Roman civilization were Germanic in origin and argued that the Germanic invasions at the end of the Roman empire had produced “delinquency, vagabondage and ferocity”. Sergi believed that the Aryans were originally “Eurasiatic” barbarians who migrated from the Hindu Kush into Europe. He argued that the Italians had originally spoken a Hamitic language before the Aryan (Indo-European) Italic language spread across the country. Some Aryan influence was detectable in Northern Italy, but, racially speaking, southern Italians were unaffected by Aryan migrants.

Sergi expanded on these theories in later publications. Despite his denigration of Aryans and emphasis on Mediterranean racial identity, he denied that he was motivated by national pride, asserting that his works had the “goal of establishing the veracity of the facts without racial prejudice, without diminishing the value of one human type in order to exalt another one.”

His last book, The Britons (1936) sought to trace the rise of the British Empire to the Mediterranean component of the British population.

Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. See Terms of use for details.
Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.

 

 

Giovanni Verga (1840 – 1922), Novelist

Giovanni Carmelo Verga (2 September 1840 – 27 January 1922) was an Italian realist (Verismo) writer, best known for his depictions of life in Sicily, and especially for the short story (and later play) Cavalleria Rusticana and the novel I Malavoglia (The House by the Medlar Tree).

The first son of Giovanni Battista Catalano Verga and Caterina Di Mauro, Verga was born into a prosperous family of Catania in Sicily. He began writing in his teens, producing the largely unpublished historical novel Amore e Patria (Love and Country); then, although nominally studying law at the University of Catania, he used money his father had given him to publish his I Carbonari della Montagna (The Carbonari of the Mountain) in 1861 and 1862. This was followed bySulle Lagune (In the Lagoons) in 1863.

Meanwhile, Verga had been serving in the Catania National Guard (1860–64), after which he travelled to Florenceseveral times, settling there in 1869.

He moved to Milan in 1872, where he developed his new approach, characterized by the use of dialogue to develop character, which resulted in his most significant works. In 1880 his story collection Vita dei Campi (Life in the Fields), (including “Fantasticheria”, “La Lupa”, and “Pentolacchia”) most of which were about rural Sicily, came out. It also included “Cavalleria Rusticana”, which he adapted for the theatre and later formed the basis for several opera librettos including Mascagni’sCavalleria rusticana and Gastaldon’s Mala Pasqua!. Verga’s short story, “Malaria”, was one of the first literary depictions of the disease.

He then embarked on a projected series of five novels, but only completed two, I Malavoglia and Mastro-don Gesualdo (1889), the second of which was the last major work of his literary career. Both are widely recognized as masterpieces.

In 1894 Verga moved back to the house he was born in. In 1920 he was elected a senator. He died of a cerebral thrombosis in 1922.

The Teatro Verga in Catania is named after him.

The book Le immagini e le parole dei Malavoglia by Silvia Iannello (Sovera, Roma, 2008), contains passages from Verga’s novel I Malavoglia with commentary and photographs of Aci Trezza and a chapter devoted to Visconti’s 1948 film La terra trema which was based on the novel.

Novels

• Love and homeland (1856–1857)
• Carbonari of the mountain (1861–1862)
• On the lagoons (1862–1863)
• A sinner (1866)
• History of a Capinera (1871)
• Eva (1873)
• Eros (1875)
• Royal tiger (1875)
• I Malavoglia (1881)
• Elena’s husband (1882)
• Novelle rusticane (1883), translated as Little Novels of Sicily by D.H. Lawrence (1925)
• Mastro-don Gesualdo (1889)
• From your to my (1905)

Short stories

• Nedda (1874)

Spring and other story (1877)

• Spring
• The tail of the devil
• X
• Certain subjects
• Rosso Malpelo (1878)
• The stories of the Trezza’s castle

The life of the fields (1880)

• Rustic Chivalry

New York Choral Society Will Embark on a Cultural Ambassadorship to Sicily Next Summer

June 27, 2012 5:00 pm

to

July 8, 2012 5:00 pm

We are very proud to announce that the New York Choral Society will embark on a cultural ambassadorship to Sicily next summer. For the 180 member chorus in it’s 53rd year, this will be its 14th International Tour.

The renowned Maestro Alberto Veronesi, who leads the Sinfonica Siciliana, the Opera Orchestra of New York, the Petruzzelli Orchestra di Bari and more, made his Carnegie Hall debut with the Opera Orchestra of New York and the NYCS in Cavalleria Rusticana and La Navarraise last fall and subsequently invited them to sing in a festival he designed.

The New York Choral Society Music Festival, June 27 to July 8 will take place in Cefalù and Taormina. There will be three concerts in each location including the Cathedral in Cefalù and the Teatro Greco in Taormina. The trip is designed to highlight the cultural and historical aspects of Sicily’s heritage and engage with locals along the way. The program will include material from both the upcoming Joyful Noise concert at Carnegie Hall, December 14 and its special American Reflections concert April 20, 2012, marking the last concert for outgoing Musical Director John Daly Goodwin, after 25 years.

For further information and tickets, go to www.nychoral.org.

Lad Live – Music & Care

November 5, 2011
9:00 pm	to	11:00 pm

Lad Live – Music & Care is a musical event organized by Lad which stands for L’Albero dei Desideri to raise funds for the children of  Oncologia Pediatrica del Policlinico di Catania. Among the singers that perform at Teatro Massimo Bellini are Mario Biondi, Carmen Consoli, Luca Madonia and Mario Venuti.

 

 

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